CULTURAL MEDIATION
ENGAGING THE PUBLIC

By Christopher DiRaddo

As an audience member we are used to a certain kind of theatre-going experience: the usher tears our ticket, we find our seat and then leaf through the playbill until the house lights go down. We are then expected to sit in the dark and bear witness to the spectacle unfolding before us until, once it’s over, we leave the theatre with our own thoughts, never really speaking to anyone involved in the production.

Get A Real Job! written and performed by Cheryl Whynott, Linda Dickerson, Wendy Johns, S. Alan Asher, Sheryl Day, Judy Searson. Facilitated by Laurie McGauley

Even if theatre begins on the stage and ends in the mind of the audience, much of it is a very one-sided communication: the artist performing for the audience. Save for talkbacks, workshops (or even laughter) there are not many opportunities for the audience to engage with the artist. However, these days many theatre artists are thinking up better ways to interact with the public, sometimes by even including them in the creation process. Cultural Mediation finds artists directly reaching out to different communities, some of which have never before been to the theatre, and inviting them into a two-way relationship with the artist.
 
“I was never really interested in traditional theatre,” says one such cultural mediator, Laurie McGauley. “I was very much an activist and so the whole democratic process appealed to me of involving people in the creation of their own representation.” McGauley found that there were inherent ethical dimensions to representing people and their issues. She felt it was important to speak with these people in order for the representation to be authentic and honest. “And I felt that if I was going to engage people by interviewing them so I can feed my own creative process, then why don’t I just engage them in the entire process.”
 
In 1996, McGauley started up Myths and Mirrors, a multi-disciplinary arts organization that works to plug non-artists with professional ones in order to help inspire them and permit them to express themselves and their own cultures through art. “This has always proven to me to be a very exciting way to approach art and is much more in keeping with my expectations that art is going to move people, that it’s going to shift their perceptions and touch them.”
 
One of her most recent projects involved working with call centre employees in northern Ontario. “We wanted to look exactly at what these jobs were so we brought together a group of call centre workers. Most of them were middle aged women who had never done theatre before. It took almost a year working with these women once a week, first exploring their stories and then developing the play based on them.” McGauley presented the work at several labour conferences around the world and the result was phenomenal. The final evaluation showed that all of these women became more active in their own lives and developed an appreciation for theatre where there wasn’t necessarily one before.
 
This form of cultural mediation engages people as creators and equals who both understand theatre and can create with it. “You suddenly understand it as a medium and not just as entertainment... that helps shrink that distance between the arts,” says McGauley. “They then become interested in seeing other theatre and what other people are doing with it.”

REACHING OUT TO AUDIENCES
“The list of people I know who have felt alienated from the theatre because they don’t see themselves reflected in it is long,” says graduating playwright Darrah Teitel. “Even young actors who come from different backgrounds get frustrated at some point because none of the stories have anything to do with them.”

“I feel 90% of the world is missing out on not being exposed to theatre and I think the only real way to do it is to bring theatre out into the real world instead of creating things that would draw them in.” – Darrah Teitel

 
Teitel thinks a lot about audiences when she writes. “It’s the first thing,” she says. “I often find that I think I am writing for a very specific demographic and then after I finish writing I think this could be good for lots of people.” Part of this fixation includes where she will find her own audiences when she graduates this spring.
 
“I feel 90% of the world is missing out on not being exposed to theatre and I think the only real way to do it is to bring theatre out into the real world instead of creating things that would draw them in.” In addition to writing plays for main stages, Teitel is deeply involved in collective creation work. She believes it is through this type of work she will be able to tap into new audiences. Her most recent collective collaboration, entitled You Like It, dealt with transgendered issues. “We did some work to make sure that that demographic was informed about the play and we got a large portion of the queer community to come out and see it. They were happy that it reflected their experience and that someone was bothering to tell their story.”
 
She has also taken her work into prisons and was astounded at the impact created by this outreach into new communities. “It made me realize how powerful art can be in people’s lives when there’s a void of it... It disarms people... it forges community.”
 
Teitel sees the majority of theatre’s audience as being an older, upper-class, bourgeois demographic and the potential for theatre to get itself a new audience is huge and necessary if it’s going to survive as an art form. “I think it’s the responsibility of every single person working in the theatre to consider that.”

GET THEM WHILE THEY'RE YOUNG
Graduating director Arianna Bardesono also believes it is a collaborative effort to develop new audiences. “My idea of theatre is very much a team where there isn’t a separation between artistic and administrative.” She believes that audience development needs to start with getting young children interested in theatre. “You give them some great theatre when they’re kids and they’ll come see your shows as adults.” Bardesono has toured a children’s production with Nova Scotia’s Mermaid Theatre throughout North America. “I felt really honoured that I could give them something that I never had as a kid.”
 
Another of Bardesono’s concerns is how to attract new audiences. Originally from Italy, she once toured several small villages with a play that took place in public fountains and also presented work in an abandoned London cemetery. “It’s a completely different relationship,” she says of taking theatre to the public. “You give up a little bit of the authority. If it’s a shared space, it is therefore more of a shared experience. I find that the audience always, no matter what your content, responds better.”
 
It is also Bardesono’s firm belief that no matter what, theatre will always have an audience. “As human beings we still need contact. We still need to be in a room together and share an experience. There is something about theatre that is ritual and goes to the very beginning of human history. I don’t think that will ever disappear.” 

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